


Packing For A Contingency

by Mandergee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Headcannons for Melinda May's father, One Shot, Spoilers for S02 E04 "Face My Enemy", Talk of Character Death, angst to a minor degree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandergee/pseuds/Mandergee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Running away never solved anything...but for Melinda May it had become something she could plan for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Packing For A Contingency

When she'd first packed a bag she was twelve, furious over her mother's demands that she take cello lessons, ballet lessons...anything she felt would ensure her daughter success in life. Melinda had hated cello, loathed every second spent in ballet flats and leotards, and she'd promised herself that at the first opportunity she would pack a bag and run away. To live with her father, if she could find him, and discover a way to live life on _her_ terms, without missing out on things she wanted badly to experience. But she hadn't found her father, hadn't made it farther than the bus station before her Aunt Julia had picked her up and she'd been taken home again.To face her mother, and the shame of running away.

“It's what you do,” Her mother always told her after that, the same measure of disapproval in her voice when she'd pull her close, hug her tightly until the tears abated and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the idea of having fallen apart. She would say it again, years later, as Melinda dialed her number on a secured cell in a secret base far away from home. “You run, Qiaolian. Never have I had a child who did not hide when she was unhappy.”

“Mama, I'm your only child.”

“This is true. However, I have not had another, so there is also a truth to that statement.” A quiet fell over the line and May checked the screen, ensured the call was still connected as her mother's name flashed, white against blue. “Not everything can be solved by a plan of escape. If Phillip asks you to kill him and it is for the greater good of your agency-”

“ _Nothing_ is worth what he's asking me to do.” The pain choked her for a moment and she leaned back against the cinder-block wall, reaching for the stack of passports to her left and flipping through them. She had several she had never used, ready to be updated and taken at a moments notice, and in the stack she'd included several more for someone else. Ready to fly, to land somewhere new and start over. “I need tickets. Money.”

“And these are things your agency cannot give you?”

"I can't...he'll ask too many questions.” Coulson had gone through everything she had, all of the training and courses needed to churn the best and the brightest agents out of the Academy, and his skills at observation were matched with her own. She knew he'd notice money shifting, budgets allocating funds for supplies that reached a destination never really specified. He could follow a trail- all he'd need was a breadcrumb, and he could always find the smallest one there was. Tickets, money...the destination- all these were things she'd have to track down elsewhere, and her mother's connections were always the best place she'd found to start. “Do you still have the coordinates to the cabin?”

“Your father-”

“He lived there, Mama. I know. And _I_ need it now- do you have the coordinates?” When she'd turned eighteen Melinda had realized the world was at her fingertips, and she'd set her sights again on tracking down her absent father, a ghost she'd lived with throughout her life in the form of stories and photographs, the former of which were so often told to her by family friends. He'd been a man whose reach had extended to many, and while she'd never gleaned much more than places he may have traveled, she'd come across the picture of a cabin in the Australian outback...and when she'd taken it to her mother, it had been in turn taken away. “ _I_ need it _now_. I need somewhere safe that I can take him.”

A light flashed on beneath the door and she held her breath, pressed a thumb lightly against the speaker to muffle her mother's voice as footsteps sounded in the hall and moved swiftly past. She'd conducted the entire conversation in Mandarin, and while she knew Coulson rarely had reason to go into the barracks anymore...she also knew he'd learned enough from her over the years that he was the only one she needed to be concerned with overhearing. And she was already worried enough.

“Qiaolian-”

“I can't kill him. You know I can't.”

A sigh, long and deep- and she knew her mother would help her, although she didn't agree with the cost. She'd never agreed, from the day Melinda had come home and spoken of nothing but S.H.I.E.L.D and Phillip Coulson, never felt what her daughter did for a cause and a man who could both betray her at a moments notice. And whether or not he controlled it, what went on in Coulson's mind could well lead him to betray those he held most dear- Melinda May among them.

“You will have the coordinates within the hour. Someone will stock the cabin with supplies...when you send word.”

“Thank you.”

The response she heard was laced with sadness, and she imagined her mother was thinking, then, about the past. Wondering if things would have been different, had her daughter chosen the path of a performer instead of a secret agent, or if she'd have met a man she wouldn't follow into hell in order to save him. May wondered if her father would have thought the same if he knew her now, or if some day he would come back to the cabin he'd abandoned without explanation, to find his baby girl grown up and taking care of a man who had spiraled into madness.

The line went quiet, and May reached over to finger the glossy pages of the passports again, unearthing a matching set from within the stack and opening the first two to read the boldly printed names inside.

_Evans, Christopher._

_Evans, Lily._

They'd used the aliases before, she could remember. A lifetime ago in Sausilito, when a little coffee shop in the middle of a city allowed two fresh new agents the opportunity to spread their wings.

When Chris Evans had saved her life, and using the name of the woman she'd been back then...she'd be saving his.

 

 


End file.
